SEO cannibalization reaps several victims every day among ecommerce, websites, portals, corporate and personal blogs. In the world of search engine optimization, this is one of the most difficult problems to snare because it is based on a misunderstanding: the unrestrained publication of content.
We know that search engine ranking, such as Google, is based on the ability to submit web pages to answer user queries. So far nothing to say, that is the goal of blogging and content marketing. But if you proceed blindly, problems arise.
Why do publications that should respond to the same search intent overlap. What are the most common ones? We usually tend to summarize them into 4 ideal-typical areas:
- Transactional: searches by individuals who want to conduct a transaction.
- Commercial: individuals are looking for information before they buy.
- Navigational: people want to reach a page in a domain.
- Informational: one gathers information to resolve doubts or problems.
If you publish posts, web pages, categories and other archival resources with the same search intent, you risk falling into the trap of duplicate content. With related SEO cannibalization. Want to go deeper? Here’s what you need to know to know and avoid this publishing problem.
What is SEO cannibalization, definition
This concept concerns the presence of two or more web pages that share search intent. That is, the search intent that prompts the user to launch a query on Google, Bing or Yahoo! (or any other search engine). The problematic condition of SEO cannibalization?
Simple, there will be several resources within a domain competing to achieve the same goal. The result: you risk holding back good website ranking with your own resources. Adding insult to injury, you not only invest time and money to write good content but also risk holding back the ranking of what you have already published.
Where does this SEO problem originate?
Is there a specific moment that sees the birth of the drama related to overlapping content? It is actually a dynamic that develops over time and goes hand in hand with Google’s ability to decipher, understand and analyze human language. At one time, SEO proceeded differently.
Specifically, each query was served by one page. So, for example, you would create two resources to rank with searches hotels in Rome and hotels in Rome. This is no longer the case today, fortunately. Each web page can conquer dozens (sometimes hundreds) of different keywords.
And it is the SEO expert’s job to do good keyword research to understand what the main topics are, the related queries that can be addressed to win rankings for other searches, and the type of content needed to meet the search intent of the user making the query.
For more: how Google search works
Types of SEO cannibalization?
Let’s start here: it is large websites – portals, ecommerce and institutional projects – that suffer from this problem. But blogs can also suffer from the dynamics of SEO cannibalization. Because this stumbling block can present itself in different forms. A few examples?
Blog articles
One of the most common cases, especially between personal and corporate blogs: you publish articles with the same search intent that could be encapsulated in a single pillar article. This is the classic condition of those who do not integrate solid SEO skills within the editorial calendar.
One of the typical cannibalizations is blog articles versus ecommerce categories or product sheets. The reason is simple: people often try to scale a transactional serp, thus with a search intent related to buying or booking (to doing something) with content that should be – instead – structured to respond to informational searches.
Result? The tab delves deeper into the product, the category presents a number of items with certain characteristics, and the blog post also. The effect is SEO cannibalization.
Something similar happens in public institution portals with a historical problem: that of seasonal content. Let’s take a concrete example with a tourism topic: ski week.
Every year people search for this keyword at a specific time. If I don’t have the awareness of this, thanks to a wise use of Google Trends, I risk publishing every year an article dedicated to how to organize a skiing week. When, instead, it would be more useful to update a single piece of content or find different search intent that is new or does not conflict with the one already identified.
Pages and SEO cannibalization
This process also affects fixed pages. For example, product sheets, landing pages, and service resources. Not to mention that in some cases friction can be created with the home page.
If the main page of the blog is a sequence of articles, the author section will be a simple duplication of the home page and its pagination. So if it is a single-signature blog it is better to de-index or even delete the author taxonomy so as not to clash with the home.
Content taxonomies
Large institutional portals, blogs and ecommerce can suffer from cannibalization between various containers needed to logically organize content. The main issue is the overlap between categories and tags, which may contrast differently and with different combinations.
- https://www.esempio.it/category/seo/
- https://www.esempio.it/tag/seo/
- https://www.esempio.it/tag/ottimizzazione-seo/
- https://www.esempio.it/tag/fare-seo/
Tags and categories can engulf each other or create duplicate content with articles. The problem here is less about editorial planning and more about structure work: before creating a new taxonomy, I need to be clear about its role within the structure. And abide by a few rules:
- Do not create categories or tags without articles.
- Avoid taxonomies with overlapping meaning.
- Do not create new tags for each article.
The problem, in each case, concerns blog article tags, which are often confused with hashtags and inserted in profusion, without logic. This can lead to the creation of thousands of completely useless pages. Endlessly and unnecessarily burdening the crawl budget.
How to solve this overlap?
The easiest way is prevention: publishing with lead feet, only after careful analysis, is the main way to avoid SEO cannibalization. However, if you go for years without a brake, you have to analyze the website and follow, broadly speaking, a basic process:
- Merge two or more articles if they have the same search intent.
- Eliminate taxonomies that are unnecessary and create redundancy.
- Put in noindex or define rel canonical for necessary resources.
- Delete pages that do not drive traffic, do not rank.
All this must be done by preserving service resources, pages that are functional to the process of the individual project or have inbound links. Here are a few more details also indicated by Google:
Minimize similar content: if you have many similar pages, try to expand each one or consolidate them all on one page. For example, if your travel site contains separate pages for two cities but the information is the same on both pages, you could merge the two pages into one page about both cities or expand each one so that it presents unique content about each city.
Merger with 301 redirect
Merging two pieces of content and performing redirects is useful, however, you need to evaluate what the main source is between two or more pieces of content so that they flow to a publication already favored by virtuous rankings and traffic.
Delete unnecessary content
Delete without 301 redirects but you must always understand if there are backlinks leading to the page you are going to delete: without redirects you risk losing the benefits of off-page SEO.
Canonical and noindex
These are perfect conditions, to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, to handle pages that can create instances of SEO cannibalization but must be present for technical and functional reasons, as happens with ecommerce color filters or blog archive pages.
Editorial processing
Another useful solution: rewrite content and direct optimization to different shores so as to avoid bickering with other publications. In some cases it may be fine to gloss over the extreme solution.